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Eberron on Five Points a Day

With all the XP potions, extra components, and fancy armor for sale, I'm shocked I haven't bought anything bigger. Turbine has a giant amount of content for purchase in the DDO Store through Adventure Packs -- modules of dungeons and adventures, just like in real-world Dungeons & Dragons. But I'm already drowning in a sea of free content. Even the cheap packs seem like unnecessary expenditures.

Fernando Paiz tells me that most people are perfectly comfortable grinding through the free offering. "We have tons of free content for players, close to 100 hours at this point, without ever having to spend anything." For the most part, I seem to be following his script. It isn't until I encounter an NPC who entreats me (me personally, because I'm special, right?) to topple the nefarious Sharn Syndicate that I finally get upsold. The story hook is intriguing, and I'm curious if this paid content is something special.

Even then, it's because I had points to spare. The quests in Sharn Syndicate are significantly harder than what I've experienced in DDO's free offering, so much so that I dragoon a friend to come and help. This is the genius of Turbine's guest passes for Adventure Packs -- I didn't make my ranger friend drop $5 on a module he doesn't need, but instead paid a few points for his temporary admission to the funhouse.

"Selling content was a bit of an experiment for us," says Paiz. "People told us, 'You can't charge for content! That's not free-to-play, people will leave!' We held pretty fast to doing that in our model." Eventually, it paid off. As the player base churns through free content and begins leveling alts, many dip into the Adventure Packs to add spice to the level-grind, even at lower levels. The community even keeps an up-to-date review list of the content, targeted specifically at alt-grinding. Paying a la carte means players can pick and choose, skipping packs that don't fit their needs.

Those high-end purchases are a slow burn for Turbine, but ultimately produce big numbers."It didn't happen the first month," says Paiz, "but over the several months we've been live, content, races, and classes have become our largest category in terms of dollars generated over a given month."

This Year's Model

Twenty hours of solid MMO fantasy gameplay later, I've got 247 of my initial 1,550 points left. For my $20 investment, I ended up with a level 5 Drow cleric that can solo DDO's easier quests or heal party members in tougher areas. I've long since outgrown the fancy armor from the DDO store, but still find myself thinking about buying XP potions.

Admittedly, I went points-crazy. I didn't need to spend any money at all, but my purchases made my initial 20 hours flow just a bit better. Most people don't even bother; Fernando tells me that "20% of our active players are spending money in the store," but that 20% includes monthly subscribers -- who get a points stipend, broadly unlocked content, and other benefits -- giving Turbine the double-dip. Even with the freeloaders, the DDO Store has turned the game into a cash factory. According to a presentation given by Paiz at the LOGIN conference earlier this year, DDO's monthly revenues are up over 500% in just six months.

Turbine's revenue model is built on making the game a little bit easier if you're willing to pay, but balancing that "little bit" is key. "We never had the desire to put in, say, a +5 Amazing
Frost Ax and charge $50 for it," says Kate Paiz, Fernando's spouse and LOTRO's executive producer, who's currently taking the Turbine model to Middle-earth. "We had many years' worth of data from players in terms of what they did or didn't like, which areas they found fun or found hard, what their wish list was."

And like any good online company, they used that data to make the user experience better and bring in more dollars. Google does that with online advertising; the New York Times does it for content. Eventually, the store itself becomes another source of data, bringing Turbine closer to its players while maximizing revenue. It's clearly working for DDO, and I suspect it will work for LOTRO as well.

Will it spread? Will Blizzard's foray into selling in-game content (I'm looking at you, Celestial Steed) expand into a full-on movement to the Turbine way? Perhaps not. Blizzard, as the 11-million subscriber continent in the MMO sea, can likely milk the old-school model indefinitely. But for the rest of the world, I'm convinced: The Turbine way works.